A Divorce After 50 Years That She Soon Regretted

Freedom — or Something Else?

The divorce was finalized just months before their 51st anniversary.

At first, Margaret felt exhilarated. She redecorated her smaller apartment. She joined a travel group and took a trip to Italy. She enjoyed the novelty of answering only to herself.

But freedom has a different texture when it’s no longer new.

The evenings grew longer. The silence in her apartment felt heavier than the silence she once shared with Thomas. There was no familiar cough from the next room, no predictable footsteps down the hallway, no one to comment on the weather or ask how her day went.

Loneliness, she realized, echoes louder than routine.